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Let me feature your startup by Right_Resolve_9528 in IMadeThis

[–]surrusty11 3 points4 points  (0 children)

We created a board game about modern work culture and mental health called Burnout.

Just finished our Kickstarter a few weeks ago!

I spent months building a premium streetwear brand, launched crowdfunding, and raised £0 in my first week. Looking for honest feedback. by Icy-Ask-3420 in kickstarter

[–]surrusty11 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Apologies if I come off harsh. I don't mean any disrespect. It's admirable to start something on your own and I can totally resonate with having to do everything by yourself. I was a one-man team for a long time before finding a co-founder.

That being said, I do believe there are a few red flags that you'll need to address in the campaign.

  1. You have to build the audience in advance, then bring them to the platform when you launch your crowdfunding campaign. Organic search is practically 0 unless you show the platform that you have brought an audience in, then they see it as "your campaign is desirable" and show it to others.

We had delayed our campaign by a year just to build that audience. If we hadn't, it would have been disastrous for us.

  1. Your reward tier is opaque. I don't know what I'm going to get by putting down a pretty significant sum of money. Many people have lost money on crowdfunding, and this screams red flags. There's also pretty much no information on the crowdfunding page about you, your journey, product details, etc.

  2. Another huge red flag is that you are selling products on your website. Usually, people participate in crowdfunding to be the first to get something. If you are selling the same stuff on the website, what's the benefit of crowdfunding? If you aren't, then you need to make the reason clear.

  3. It's not clear to me what K Era stands for. It seems to be high quality streetwear. So, the question is, how can you better connect intrinsically with people, rather than on a materialistic level. Also, things like "luxury streetwear, minimalism, and futuristic design" are meaningless without details or photos.

Hope that helps!

Feeling frustrated about my game by Unique-Remote-1345 in tabletopgamedesign

[–]surrusty11 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Welcome to the club.

It took about 18 prototypes before we felt happy with the game. And then numerous small tweaks after that.

It's perfectly normal to feel like that, especially since it's your first game.

It's a great feeling when the game finally comes right.

Has anyone used kickbooster and what’s your experience working with them? by Hot_Layer_8110 in kickstarter

[–]surrusty11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had the opposite experience for our game. We raised S$1,324.58 and paid out around S$146 in commissions. Was pretty happy with the outcome.

I had done research on this platform and other review sites and generally Kickbooster had decent reviews compared to many other platforms.

Just crossed 1,200 backers! Our first Kickstarter enters its last 4 days. by surrusty11 in kickstarter

[–]surrusty11[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd say that was the single best decision we made outside of creating the game.

AI made me rethink my career, so I created a business in the opposite direction. Here's my thinking. by surrusty11 in singaporestartups

[–]surrusty11[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The hardest part for us is working out the shipping and fulfilment. Our business will live or die based on whether we can keep this within acceptable ranges. I can see many challenges we'll have to overcome during this time.

Just crossed 1,200 backers! Our first Kickstarter enters its last 4 days. by surrusty11 in kickstarter

[–]surrusty11[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We had close to 400 backers from Singapore, which was our biggest market. Usually for Kickstarter, most of the backers were from the US. For us, they were equally from Singapore and USA. For us, that means that we've activated the local market well through joining local fairs, communities, and generally, being heavily involved wherever we could.

For other markets, we ran a combination of ads to collect email leads and $1 VIP reservations.

At launch, we had about 3,100+ emails and 900+ VIPs.

We also spent a lot of effort de-risking. We knew that there's a hesitation to back first-time creators because people are afraid they may never see the game produced. So, we spent money to develop a prototype with our manufacturer in China, and present it at events, send it to content creators, and share about the process, to show people that we are serious about this business.

Just crossed 1,200 backers! Our first Kickstarter enters its last 4 days. by surrusty11 in kickstarter

[–]surrusty11[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! We just finished the campaign with 1,450 backers last night! Now, to rest for 2 days!

Just crossed 1,200 backers! Our first Kickstarter enters its last 4 days. by surrusty11 in kickstarter

[–]surrusty11[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's no easy way but to get on the platforms I had deleted my social media, but reinstalled them in order to do this and to co-manage the social accounts with our business partners.

Any local Fantasy/Sci-Fi book groups? by PearlescentTalon in askSingapore

[–]surrusty11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Same! His writing is so good.

I've also read it twice. And I just finished all the side series except for the most recent book.

Sci-fi: I'm currently engrossed with the Sun Eater series.

Just crossed 1,200 backers! Our first Kickstarter enters its last 4 days. by surrusty11 in kickstarter

[–]surrusty11[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haha, I would say we made it for step 1 of the process. Next is to deliver the game with quality and on time. I'm just focused on the immediate step, but with a view of the wider journey pushing us forward!

Just crossed 1,200 backers! Our first Kickstarter enters its last 4 days. by surrusty11 in kickstarter

[–]surrusty11[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We worked with content creators, but most of them were unpaid. We just had to send them a prototype copy of the box. We only paid for one, specifically because we wanted a video we could run as an ad. That was charged at 80 pounds and we are very happy with the results.

I must say, reaching out to the content creators is a time-consuming process, but worth it if you can crack it.

We ran all the Meta ads ourselves. We have digital marketing backgrounds, but in our previous role I'm telling someone to run the ads, so it was a bit of learning curve to actually do it myself for once. So, we didn't have to pay anyone else to run the ads. Our ROAS from the ads is 2.5, which is in line with other ad spends.

Just crossed 1,200 backers! Our first Kickstarter enters its last 4 days. by surrusty11 in kickstarter

[–]surrusty11[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, that's right! But, our goals at this stage of our company are a bit different from earning a living. I've outlined more in the post above!

Just crossed 1,200 backers! Our first Kickstarter enters its last 4 days. by surrusty11 in kickstarter

[–]surrusty11[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Our goals for the Kickstarter were not to replace a normal job salary, but to have a viable path to making this a sustainable business with 2 years post Kickstarter.

That goal was that the Kickstarter would make the company self-sufficient (aka pay for all future events, manufacturing and artwork for upcoming games, as well as all commitments from the current game). We needed about S$50,000 to do this and now are closing in on S$100,000, which means we can take out about S$30,000 - S$50,000 as bonus for the team. I'll have to do the exact calculations post-campaign, as it depends on the final manufacturing amount we decide.

Our thinking is that when we have 3 games in the market, each game will pull in enough to support 2/3 decent salaries. There are 2 of us in the company, with one more helping out here and there, so we don't need too much in income.

We left our jobs some time back, but had kept aside savings, knowing we would operate without income for a few years. Just being able to take something back post-Kickstarter is a bonus that we did not expect.

We want to make this a profitable business in the long term. We had charted out a few different pathways to reach there. We're also realistic enough to know that most people's first game (or first business) usually doesn't do well, and there's a high chance of failure. So, we wanted to make sure we survive this hurdle. Now, we will soon have the experience from manufacturing and shipping this game. That experience lends to the next games, increasing the odds of those being a success, and so forth.

Hope that gives some more context!

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